Nigeria must address its domestic woes and win legitimacy at home before having a hope of fulfilling international ambitions
By Ike Okonta
Tuesday, Jan 22, 2008, Page 9
Russia is not alone in seeing oil as a means to transform its global standing. Nowadays, the mantra of Nigerian President Umar Yar'Adua, who took power last June following controversial elections, is to transform the country into one of the world's 20 largest economies by 2020. Yar'Adua and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are struggling to stamp their authority on an unwieldy and restive country of 140 million people, and the government views rapid growth as a means to achieving that aim.
Nigerians can use a dose of hope. Olusegun Obasanjo, who became Nigeria's first elected president in 1999 after nearly two decades of military dictatorship, left vast swathes of the country trapped in poverty when he handed power to Yar'Adua.
With oil nudging US$100 per barrel and energy-hungry giants like the US and China beating a path to its door, Africa's leading oil producer wants to use petrodollars to cure the nation's economic ills and flex its muscles in the international arena.
While riding the crest of the last oil boom in the late 1970s, Nigeria's military leaders nationalized the assets of British Petroleum and became champions of pan-African cooperation, financing several African liberation movements. The interests of the West and Nigeria repeatedly clashed, but Nigeria always stood its ground.
Inept government and economic decline in the 1980s and 1990s obliged Nigeria's leaders to focus on problems closer to home, like the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. But old habits die hard. Full Story
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